not to feel very glad! I will try to be very glad, but do not ask me any more to-night.”
“Poor little darling!” said Mrs. Richmond.
She kissed Nan, and nodded to Kitty to run up to Nan and take her hand.
“You are my sister, you know, and I love you already,” said Kitty; and so Nan went upstairs to bed.
Early the next morning, when the little girl felt that she had already only enjoyed her first sleep, she was awakened by some one pulling her rather violently by the arm. She looked up in astonishment. Just at first she could not in the least remember where she was, nor what had happened. Then it all rushed over her – her mother’s funeral of the day before, her own great misery, the change in her life. But she had scarcely time to realise these things, and certainly had not a moment to fret about them, when the eager voice of Kitty was sounding in her ears.
“Get up, please, Nan; dress yourself as fast as ever you can in the dark, and come into the schoolroom. If you are not very quick you will miss seeing the animals getting their breakfasts, and that is the best fun of the day. Now, be quick – be quick! I will come back again in a few minutes. I have lit the candle for you; here it is. Hot water? No; you must do without that. Fly – dash into your clothes, and be in the schoolroom in a quarter of an hour.”
Kitty disappeared, and Nan got up. She felt quite excited; she could not help herself. It was useless to pretend that she felt anything but a sense of rejoicing as she thought of the animals. When with human beings she must remember her mother, and her own suffering, and her great loss, but with the animals she could only rejoice. She scrambled into her clothes, making, it is true, a very sorry spectacle of herself.
“Sophia Maria, my darling,” she said to her doll, “you had better get warm into bed, and lie tucked up there while I am attending to the animals. I will never love them better than I love you, but I must see how they get their breakfasts. They are alive, Maria darling – they are alive; you understand, don’t you?”
Sophia Maria stared with her vacant smile at her little mistress.
“How good she is! she never frets,” thought the little girl; and then she went into the schoolroom, where a fire was lighted – a dull, dim-looking fire, which certainly gave forth no heat whatever just yet – and the gas was turned on.
“Is it not a good thing we have gas?” said Kitty.
Honora and Kitty were both in the schoolroom. They were wearing a long kind of holland smocks over their dresses; their faces looked quite serene and important.
“Now, Nan, which will you take? I think this morning, if you were to hold all the kittens in your lap, you might just watch us. We have to be ever so busy; Miss Roy only gives us a quarter of an hour at this time of day to clean out all the animals’ homes, and I can tell you it is exciting when you have got pups and kittens and birds and mice and rats. Is it not nice of Miss Roy? The mice and rats she will not allow in the room, but she allows the others. We keep them upstairs in the top attic. Sometimes the rats bite, and the mice too; but who minds a little pain when it is an animal – a darling – that has to be attended to?”
Nan was perfectly satisfied to sit near the fire holding the kittens. There were two Persian kittens, and their names were Lord and Lady. They were very handsome, with long, soft chinchilla fur, tiny tails at present, and big heads. Nan stroked them in ecstasy; there was not the slightest doubt that thrills of comfort went through her heart which Sophia Maria had never yet been able to bestow.
Kitty and Honora meanwhile were very busy. The parrot’s cage required a great deal of attention. The parrot was inclined to be rather fierce; he would fly frantically after the little hands when they were put in to take out the seed-trough, and he would cock his head to one side, and then shout out, “Here comes the naughty girl!” and fix his eyes on Nan all the time.
“He does mean me,” said Nan, forgetting the kittens and going up to the cage in her excitement. “Oh dear! is it not funny of him? And I suppose I am a naughty girl.”
“Well, I hope so,” said Kitty. “We don’t want you to be a goody girl; we should not like that at all. We don’t want you to be mournful and sulky and anything like that; we like you to have some spirit in you. You know your darling little Jack who belongs to you altogether? Well, you are to have all the trouble of him; and you are to take the blame also if he is naughty and fidgety, and tears our dresses, and bites the tablecloth. You will be the one to be reprimanded; don’t forget that.”
“I don’t think I shall like that.”
“Well, but surely you do not expect us to be blamed about your animal! I never heard of such a thing!” said Nora “Now we have done everything; go back and get as tidy as you can for breakfast.”
Nan went back to her room feeling much excited. While she was out nurse had entered.
“So you are going to have an animal, miss; and you are going to get up every morning to help the young ladies to feed their pets and clean out their cages?”
“Yes; they have asked me to,” said Nan.
“That is right, my dear; and I hope you will have a happy time and make yourself one of the family.”
“I will try to,” said Nan.
“The first thing you have to do is to give me the frock you wore last night.”
“But, oh!” said Nan, “that is my own frock, bought out of my own money. Please, I would rather – I would rather not give it.”
“I am afraid if you are one of the family you have got to obey Mrs. Richmond, and she does not intend you to wear that ugly frock any more.”
“It is not ugly,” said Nan, colouring high.
“Well, miss, I am afraid it is; and anyhow you cannot wear it, for I am going to take it away. Here is a nice little suitable dress – black, of course, and made the same way as Miss Kitty’s dresses are made. Here, put it on, miss, or you will be late for breakfast.”
All poor Nan’s misery returned to her at these words. She felt as if she were most unjustly treated; she could scarcely bear her own feelings. The pretty frock in which she looked so nice and fresh, and in which she had once again the appearance of a lady, did not appeal to her. She shrugged her shoulders discontentedly, and was only comforted when nurse insisted on her wearing a white pinafore which nearly covered the frock.
Just as she was leaving her bedroom she turned and spoke.
“If you will not let me wear my own frock – and I bought all my own mourning for my own mother – may I at least keep it?”
“Oh yes, poor little girl!” said nurse, much touched by these words. “I will put it in the bottom of the little trunk you brought with you. You might give it to a poor girl some day, and she might make it fit her; it is not fit for any one to wear at present.”
Nan was fain to be comforted with this sort of half-promise of nurse’s, and entered the school-room, where she stood, looking somewhat forlorn, by the fire. But this mood was not to be of long duration, for Nora and Kitty came bounding in. They had made up their minds: the time of gloom was past; they were going to be their own riotous, gay, merry, rebellious, fidgety, almost unruly little selves once again to-day.
Miss Roy was almost as merry as her pupils. At breakfast they screamed with laughter; animals, of course, were the subjects of conversation. The virtues of Jack,
